3 ms·

This sounds profound, but when I give it some thought it says very little. Language can easily be interpreted as a technique of the tongue, or of the hand, of

by smokel 3y ago

This sounds profound, but when I give it some thought it says very little. Language can easily be interpreted as a technique of the tongue, or of the hand, of the clay tablet, of mark making, et cetera. Obviously, the main contributor to the extra level of human evolution is the propagation of thoughts from mind to mind. These thoughts, concepts, ideas, what have you, are so broad in scope that stating this fact alone does not describe anything about its implications. It would be similar to saying that the laws of physics have driven our evolution.

hackerlight 3y ago
> Language can easily be interpreted as a technique of the tongue. Obviously, the main contributor to the extra level of human evolution is the propagation of thoughts from mind to mind. It's not just a technique or a system of communication. It's a communication system that is coevolved with us to help us optimally think about and communicate in our social environments. Language does this by compressing our reality into a set of useful abstractions that have high utility. If an abstraction is useful (e.g. "money" or "drink"), it survives evolutionary pressures. If it is not useful, it is discarded by evolutionary pressures. You're left with a highly optimized system that compresses our shared reality into the sweetspot level of abstraction such that we can think and communicate optimally within the memory limits of our brain. That's amazing. What's unresolved, in my mind, is how much did language contribute to our evolution? Like, what exactly does the bidirectionality look like in this coevolutionary process?
- smokel 3y ago
  > how much did language contribute to our evolution? If you see language as a basis for science, then there are some profound effects due to anti-conception medicine, and rich but ugly intellectuals seem to be doing better than expected when it comes to mating rituals [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spellcasting_101:_Sorcerers_Get_All_the_Girls https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spellcasting_101:_Sorcerers_...
- mistermann 3y ago
  Also unresolved: how optimal are we at language, where it needs to be (see the different styles used in different domains), on an absolute scale. If we never look into it, I suspect we'll never find out.
visarga 3y ago
Language does contribute. Without it we could not live in close proximity in such large numbers and culture would not evolve. Thanks to language there are billions of us and we have conquered earth. Language made us, in a way. And of course when I say language I mean all the ideas we put in language, especially knowledge and methods. Not just sounds. Ideas don't travel very far absent language.

by smokel 3y ago

hackerlight 3y ago

> Language can easily be interpreted as a technique of the tongue. Obviously, the main contributor to the extra level of human evolution is the propagation of thoughts from mind to mind. It's not just a technique or a system of communication. It's a communication system that is coevolved with us to help us optimally think about and communicate in our social environments. Language does this by compressing our reality into a set of useful abstractions that have high utility. If an abstraction is useful (e.g. "money" or "drink"), it survives evolutionary pressures. If it is not useful, it is discarded by evolutionary pressures. You're left with a highly optimized system that compresses our shared reality into the sweetspot level of abstraction such that we can think and communicate optimally within the memory limits of our brain. That's amazing. What's unresolved, in my mind, is how much did language contribute to our evolution? Like, what exactly does the bidirectionality look like in this coevolutionary process?

smokel 3y ago
> how much did language contribute to our evolution? If you see language as a basis for science, then there are some profound effects due to anti-conception medicine, and rich but ugly intellectuals seem to be doing better than expected when it comes to mating rituals [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spellcasting_101:_Sorcerers_Get_All_the_Girls https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spellcasting_101:_Sorcerers_...
mistermann 3y ago
Also unresolved: how optimal are we at language, where it needs to be (see the different styles used in different domains), on an absolute scale. If we never look into it, I suspect we'll never find out.

visarga 3y ago

Language does contribute. Without it we could not live in close proximity in such large numbers and culture would not evolve. Thanks to language there are billions of us and we have conquered earth. Language made us, in a way. And of course when I say language I mean all the ideas we put in language, especially knowledge and methods. Not just sounds. Ideas don't travel very far absent language.